Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Flicker” by Carolyn Nakagawa.

---

Flicker

By Carolyn Nakagawa

The flicker made a nest in our wall but it wasn’t their songs I heard. Baby starlings, dear settlers.

I worried about building damage but I also warmed to the music. Where else would they go.

Creatures of this burning planet, raised on matches that line our nest. We sing.

(Too much per month but we’re making it work. What if it gets torn down. Keep the heat low,

spend money on scarves instead. Fans pointed out the window in summer, ice packs in bed. The

plants couldn’t take it. Wish we had a basement, a shady tree.)

Meanwhile, where did the flicker go? I glimpsed one in the open – spreading its wings, flashing

white. Canvas under feathers’ wraps, in motion, taut over avian spine, lungs, heart. Dropcloth

for eggs, nestlings. I wouldn’t dare paint on it. Which one drummed a hole in my borrowed

home. One which has babies, must, also. I wouldn’t recognize their song.

---

Copyright © Carolyn Nakagawa

Carolyn Nakagawa is an Anglo-Japanese Canadian poet and playwright who makes her home in the territories colonized as Vancouver, BC. You can read more of her poetry in the anthology The Gate of Memory: Poems by Descendants of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration (Haymarket Books), and in publications such as ARC, CV2, and The Malahat Review, among others. She is currently seeking a publisher for her first full-length poetry manuscript.

---

Subscribe to Poetry Pause, or support Poetry Pause with a donation today!

---